Early this season on AMC’s smash hit Mad Men, Peggy Olsen (Elisabeth Moss), who pulls no punches, told Don (above) “we’re all here because of you.” Peggy, eager to please her mentor, but also put off by his excessive drinking and snappy temper, was quite emphatic. The new agency, SCDP, was populated by people for the most part hand picked by Don. After Don gave a poorly received interview to a trade publication, the new venture, along with people’s confidence in the magical Don Draper was imperiled. Don would right his gaffe by giving a lights out interview to the Wall Street Journal. Later in the season, he’d win a prestigious award in his field–a monument to the new agency. Don even began exercising restraint with the bottle. It was a good sign for DD fans who saw his life careening out of control. It took a drunken tussle with Duck Phillips of all people for him to recognize the need for a more sober Don. How embarrassing it was when a much younger Don said “uncle” with Duck on top of him. But Don had fought to protect Peggy’s honor, and their relationship, which fractured some time after Don had come to visit Peggy in the hospital after she gave birth to Campbell’s love child, mostly because Don had been extra hard on Peggy and because Peggy perceived that Don would always get the credit for her work, was back on track. Unfortunately for Don it took a death to someone important to him–the real Ms. Draper–for Peggy to see Don in a different light. The rift between creative’s 2 most creative, especially after Don had brought Peggy back to the agency from oblivion, and after Peggy had bailed Don out of a Long Island jail on a DUI rap, had us very disturbed. We were happy to see things set right, and learning that Cooper (Robert Morse) had lost his testicles in the Great War and that Sterling (John Slattery) had been sexually ravaged by that cougar Ms. Blankenship was the cherry on top.

In many regards, it’s been a watershed year for Don. Don started swimming, pardon the earlier pun, and we noticed that the dullness that had set in after his divorce was departing. Perhaps it wasn’t quite the year we were expecting from him though. I for one, assumed that Don, newly single and unleashed upon the city, would display that “legendary prowess” with the ladies, to steal a phrase from Nazi party, um, I mean Tea Party candidate Carl Paladino. But Don has been leading a mostly quiet existence. For Don. He’s still in the same little apartment on Waverly which is well below his means. He consented to a few dates with Bethany (Anna Camp) at the urging of Roger and Jane (Peyton List), had sex with his secretary Allison (Alexa Alemanni), which led to her throwing a paper weight at him and leaving in tears–a drunken tryst which gave Don more reason to cut back on the booze–and to scale back the office romances. Slightly. Don would still hook up with Dr. Miller (Cara Buono), banged a prostitute on the regular who he liked to beat him about the face during sex, quite the commentary on Don’s self esteem, but the dapper Draper seemed downright uncomfortable at the Kit Kat Club with Lane (Jared Harris), whose dalliance with a hooker on his impromptu New Year’s Eve with Don seemed to create a monster.

Don has also resolved some familial issues this season. Despite Betty’s new husband Henry’s (Christopher Francis) obvious disdain for him, Don presented himself at his son Gene’s birthday party, intent on not becoming the forgotten man in Gene’s life. Don’s new life may not be ideal, but he has progressed as a man, shown feelings, and learned from mistakes. None of that helped him any when Lee Garner Jr. (Darren Pettie) gave Roger the jarring news that Lucky Strike, the account that “kept the lights on”, had moved on. If that wasn’t bad enough, the aeronautics company that Campbell landed when Don left Pete stranded poolside in Hollywood to go off with a young hottie, was conducting background checks which left Don’s background exposed. Don ordered Pete, who knows Don’s secret, to drop the account. The firm went from profitable to the Titanic in one day, and Campbell, with a baby on the way, was furious at Don. With nobody in the business willing to give SCDP the time of the day due to the prevailing notion in the industry that they’d be out of business in 6 months, Lane arranged for a credit extension to keep the firm afloat. But the extension required an outlay of $100,000 from the senior partners and $50,000 each from Lane and Pete. With the company just about flatlining, Don did something. He wrote a letter to the New York Times criticizing the tobacco industry and the ad companies that stumped for it. The letter was met with outrage by the partners, especially from Bert Cooper, who made a most valid point: by not signing all their names to it, the letter submarined and undermined the other partners. Cooper was so incensed that he took his shoes and quit on the spot. Only Peggy saw the letter for what it was: a publicity stunt meant to gain SCDP much needed attention.

Where the episode left off on Sunday night, the letter had yet to produce tangible effects economically. But anti-tobacco organizations are dialing them up, and as Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton) pointed out, those organizations have infuential members who sit on the boards of major companies. Don is enthused that they will have an opportunity to work, and that their work will surely lead to more work. With regard to Campbell, Don did the right thing by putting up Campbell’s $50,000–a source of strife between Campbell and pregnant wife Trudy (Alison Brie).

The fact remains going into Sunday’s finale that the firm is in dire need of new accounts. Layoffs have begun, the industry buzz is that they are dead men walking, and they need more than a letter to The Times to turn the tide. Don must make it rain. After all, he is the brightest star in Mad Men’s midst, and what Peggy said about them all being there because of him can be applied to us, the audience, as well. If Don didn’t feel that burden, he’d never have felt obligated to pay Pete’s share, or to assure Peggy her job. Are we really going to have to sit through an anti-climactic finale in which the agency goes down in flames?

We think not. Season 3’s ending was one of the great season finale’s we’ve ever seen, and one of the strongest Mad Men episodes ever. Last year, Don, with his family life crumbling, rose above his personal circumstance, found a way to circumvent his contract, and formed the new agency in dramatic fashion. We look for something similarly spectacular from Don this week, and we trust that ace show creator, writer, and executive producer Mathew Weiner will give to us.

We would speculate, gun to our head, that Chelcie Ross will reprise his role as Conrad Hilton–a man who “comes and goes” as he pleases, someone Don has a history with, and who has the clout and financial might to take the agency off life support.

As for last week, Weiner is to be credited for having his son reprise the role of Glen, and for having United States of Tara star Rosemarie Dewitt reprise the role of Don’s former lover Midge.

In recent weeks, both Jennifer Aniston and Mad Men star January Jones have been linked to Saturday Night Live performer Jason Sudeikis, but it is Jones who continues to be seen in public with Sudeikis, who she reportedly was all over at the recent ESPY awards. These reports coming just a few weeks after Jones left the scene of an accident in Los
Angeles at the behest of Bobby Flay, and it has been whispered that Jones left the scene of the accident because she was drunk.

It also comes just weeks after many magazines prominently linked the 34 year old Sudeikis with 41 year old Jennifer Aniston, after the two seemed to get very close after working in film together. One report went so far as to say that Aniston forced Sudeikis on a studio intent on signing her to play the lead in an upcoming film, and that Sudeikis was given the leading man role opposite Aniston.

January Jones and Saturday Night Live‘s Jason Sudeikis may be Hollywood’s newest item.

Reports surfaced that that the Mad Men star, 32, and Sudeikis, 34, were making out all night at an ESPY after party and spending a lot of time together on the set of Sudeikis’s new movie. Thursday, the maybe-duo was spotted hanging out again.

According to the source, “he is just what Jen needs — a solid, low-key, funny man. It’s early days, but she’s quietly thrilled.” An insider alleges that Aniston, 41, provided comfort to Sudeikis, 34, in the wake of his divorce from 30 Rockscribe Kay Cannon and that the two didn’t start seeing one another until the filming of their movie was over and his divorce was finalized.

Let’s give a hand to Sudeikis, obviously a fast worker, who seemed to bag January Jones and Jennifer Aniston this year–way to go, stud. For those of you who do not watch movies or Saturday Night Live, you may know Sudeikis as Liz Lemon’s ex boyfriend on 30 Rock, the one who proposed to his new girlfriend on Good Morning America.

As for January Jones, she reprises her award winning role as Betty Draper in the season 4 premiere of Mad Men, Sunday at 10 PM EST on AMC. Read about Mad Men and the lovely ladies of Mad Men at the links below.

So I’ve been going to town on television lately, and with good reason, for much good TV is either set to premiere or rerun. Two Showtime favorites, if imperfect, that return tomorrow (3/22/10) are The United States of Tara and Nurse Jackie, a Lionsgate TV production. Lionsgate’s masterpiece, Mad Men, also returns tomorrow/tonight in reruns (12 AM), as AMC looks to capitalize and piggyback on the success of Breaking Bad, in its season 3 premiere, which will be aired at 10 PM and repeated at 11 PM, leading into Mad Men at 12:03.

We have learned that tonight’s Breaking Bad deals with the aftermath of the plane crash, which is an indicator that there will not be any real time lag between the season 2 finale and the season 3 premiere. We have no idea where Nurse Jackie will pick up, but it was certainly unsettling where she left off–locked inside a hospital room, about to pass out on the floor after drinking 3 bottles of morphine–and with good reason. Her boyfriend, Eddie (Paul Schulze, who you might remember best as Father Intintola from The Sopranos), lets Jackie (Edie Falco) know that he has just met her husband, who she had concealed from everyone except Dr. O’Hara (Eve Best).

Jackie is a very different role for Falco than Carmella Soprano, and I find her good in both, though Carmella Soprano was more of a scrutable character. It is very hard to understand Jackie’s deviousness, and how she betrays her husband so easily (Dominic Fumusa). Though she is a drug addict, and Eddie who was until recently the hospital’s pharmacist and her supplier, as well as her noon time lover, which makes total sense from the outside, but not from within. Inside the text, Jackie is a lot more complex than that. To crack her behavior up to the pressure’s of running a nursing unit in an ER in a busy Manhattan hospital is overly simplistic as well.

I find myself comparing Falco in this role more and more to her former fictional husband, Tony Soprano. She gets off on being able to do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, and now we finally get to see her deal with some consequences. While the audience, I assume, hopes she gets off easy, as we always hoped for Tony, I’m not sure we quite find ourselves rooting for her in the same way as we rooted for Tony, a veritable super hero of television–even though she has gone to great lengths to help children, steal from the rich and give to the poor. Perhaps that’s a societal double standard at play. At any rate, Jackie, like Tony Soprano, is a premeditated murder (she euthanized a friend and former colleague who was dying a slow and painful death), and that is a little different than killing one’s own nephew, the way Tony killed Christopher by pinching his nostrils while he choked on his own blood. Jackie may have even more of a God complex than Tony S., and that means the show can literally take us anywhere, and I must say I am apprehensive about this powder keg.

I just saw spots for Tara and Jackie on Showtime, and Anne Deavere Smith, who plays Nurse Akolitas, talked on the ad about how at the end of the day, Jackie will do anything to help those in need. Like snorting the little round contents of these unnamed capsules? By the way, how do those little round balls stay up her nose? She doesn’t even crush them up or anything! I guess Jackie is a bit of a superhero too.

At the end of the day, I am left to wonder if she will do anything to help people because of the bad stuff she is atoning for, and not out of her “humanitarian” disposition. Either way, season 2 should be the tits. We’ve seen what she’s done, and now we have to see the repurcussions, and though Jackie isn’t all good, I, for one, am very scared for her. But I have this feeling it aint gonna be no thing for this dope fiend. And we would be remiss if we did not also mention the outstanding performances turned in by nurse in training, Zoe (Merrit Weaver), and by Haaz Sleiman, playing Mohammed, Jackie’s closest nurse friend.

As for Tara, her and I got off on the wrong foot. When a scientific premise is not accurate, I have trouble falling into that sort of plot. I’m not gonna go crazy about it, but I had a problem with the medication that Tara was prescribed for her M.P.D. Not to be too specific, but they were talking about anti anxiety meds and she was in need of some serious anti psychotics. If the much ballyhooed creator and lead writer, Diablo Cody, is too lazy to get that right, then the show stands on shaky footing.

But then you see the cast–truly stellar–led by Toni Collette, who burst on to the scene almost 20 years ago in the Indie classic Muriel’s Wedding, her husband, played by the affable John Corbett, who played Carrrie’s love Aiden on Sex and the City, and who I always preferred for her to Big. By the way, how bad are they dragging Sex and the City out? I mean, I thought the movie was over 2 separate times when there was still one and a half hours, and 45 minutes left, respectively. Kill me already. And that my wife will force me to watch the sequel, about 4 women who were never hot in the first place and are now 10-15 years removed from their glory days, is already making my stomach turn.

Tara’s children probably make the show. Her daughter, played by Brie Larson (not Bree Olsen!), totally nails the free spirited hot teenage daughter of a seriously mentally ill mother. Tara’s son, Marshall, played by Keir Gilchest, is considered by some to be the show, a young adolescent, openly homosexual, living in Kansas, who has enough to deal with, as you can imagine, without one of Tara’s alters hooking up with his first boyfriend. But Marshall dealt with that rather decisively, by setting a large fire in the family’s backyard, now didn’t he?

And we must also mention Tara’s sister, Charmaine (Rosemarie Dewitt, also known for her role on Mad Men as the hippy chick that Don was fucking in season 1).

Speaking of Mad Men, as we have mentioned, reruns begin at 12:03, with season 3, episode 1, “Out of Town”, in which Don (Jon Hamm)and the aforementioned in these pages, Sal Romano (Bryan Batt) must take a business trip on which Don discovers that Sal is gay. To his credit, Don is cool with it, perhaps identifying with Sal on account of his own secrets. This pivotal episode involving Sal makes us all the more sad that he will not be returning to the cast to reprise his role.

But we are stoked that Christina Hendricks will be featured on the little screen for the next thirteen Monday mornings, in her role as office manager Joannie Holloway. While January Jones and Elisabeth Moss come bearing bigger names, Joannie does more than hold her own, which isn’t easy, considering the size of her breasts and her alien like measurements. Hendricks was recently featured in New York Magazine, and you should all check it out. The 34 year old is about to become a breakout star. And because I like you guys so much, I will leave you with a few photos of her to contemplate.

Obviously, Esquire was hot for her too…

Here’s a shot of Joan looking all hot over at Sterling Cooper.

Ahh, the women of Showtime and Lionsgate, their secret lives, multiple identities, and of Joannie–I don’t know what to say, other than I’m so glad she’s back, if only in reruns. Enjoy.